Hear the alternative Blood On The Tracks

Dylan famously re-recorded much of 'Blood On The Tracks' shortly before the album was due for release.

‘one of the most truthful dissections of love gone wrong in rock history, by turns recriminatory, bitter and heartbroken. It is one of Dylan’s peaks, the record where his genius and frail humanity meet.’
Nick Hasted for Uncut, January 2005.

30 years ago this month, in December 1974, Bob Dylan was putting the finishing touches to one of his defining records, for the second time.

Dylan was showing more than just a few frayed edges. He and his wife, Sara, had just experienced their first seperation. A marriage which, a few years later, would eventually fall apart completely. For the first years of the ’70s he had released nothing at all, trying to evade the fame and respect he had so carefully built up during the previous decade.

After starting and finishing ‘Blood On the Tracks’ in New York, it was all set for release on Christmas Day, 1974. However, on his return to Minnesota for the Christmas Holidays, Dylan and his brother, David, decided that his album was missing something. Dylan:

‘I just didn’t… I thought the songs could have sounded differently, better. So I went in and rerecorded them‘.

He rang Columbia to stop production, hired a bunch of local musicians, and booked the studio. On December 27, Minneapolis’ Sound 80 Studio began work on the second recording of ‘Blood On The Tracks’, five tracks in all, plus two extra tracks which never made the final cut.